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<title>Those You’ve Known by nowhere_dawn_death_phan</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27658354">Those You’ve Known</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowhere_dawn_death_phan/pseuds/nowhere_dawn_death_phan'>nowhere_dawn_death_phan</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Torchwood</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Broken lives in my head rent free, Gen, I was just thinking about Mandy, Post CoE Day 5, This is barely more than a drabble, Yes the title is a Spring Awakening song</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-21</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 21:40:09</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>734</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27658354</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/nowhere_dawn_death_phan/pseuds/nowhere_dawn_death_phan</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>The news of what happened in Thames House spreads, and it eventually reaches people that  Ianto hasn’t thought of in a very long time. Time dulls the ache of loss, but it’s very much still there.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>28</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>1. Chapter 1</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>“-And listed among the many dead, are Torchwood agents Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones-“<br/>
The tv is paused. That name. It isn’t a common name. Even in Wales, she can count on one hand the number of Ianto’s she knows. And the number of Ianto Jones’s is even smaller. The tv is rewound.<br/>
“-Are Torchwood agents Jack Harkness and Ianto Jones-“<br/>
Jack. She doesn’t think she ever knew his surname. Just Jack. Jack the boss. Jack the killer.<br/>
The tv is played. A photo appears on the screen. Him. It is him. She was hoping that it wouldn’t be, somehow, that it would be some other Ianto Jones. But it’s him. A shame, really. She liked him.<br/>
The tv is turned off, and Mandy Albiston goes to bed.</p>
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<a name="section0002"><h2>2. Chapter 2</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Mandy doesn’t sleep much that night. She can’t stop thinking about him, which is odd considering she hasn’t thought about him in a long time. She’d thought about him more at the start, just after she left. She’d wonder how he was doing, look down at his name in her phone and contemplate calling but never actually do it. He’d probably blocked her number anyway. And then something had changed. She’d regarded him with a strange sort of fondness at first, but that had throughout the months come to be replaced instead by a frustrated sort of bitterness towards him. And then there was Jack. She’d never liked Jack.</p><p>From the stories that Ianto had told about him, he’d certainly sounded like a character. Ianto had liked him enough, but something about it all hadn’t sat right with Mandy. And then it’d come to light that he was a murderer, and Ianto’s uncertainty had made sense. Falling for the man that killed your girlfriend, it certainly was a predicament.<br/>
Mandy had liked being there for Ianto, liked that he had trusted her, that he relied on her. There had come a point where she’d actually started to care about him. It hadn’t been about sending him through the doorway anymore, it had been about getting him through the day, about making him smile. Eventually the opportunity had presented itself and she’d gone right back to the original plan of getting rid of him, but even then she’d felt that maybe he deserved better than that.<br/>
And then Jack had walked into the pub, loud and cocky, and Mandy had liked him even less. She’d been glad when he was gone, however brief it had been. She thought maybe Ianto could have been better without him. But no, the office boy had gone crawling into the dark after him, and Mandy had been fairly confident that would be the last that she’d see of either of them, for better or for worse. It hadn’t been, of course, because things were never that simple. Especially not with Ianto, which was something that she’d fast learned from being around him. He had to complicate things. And then she’d had to leave. </p><p>She isn’t going to pretend the concept of Jack’s death upsets her, because it really doesn’t. It’s no less than what he deserves. She hopes it hurt. Ianto? That’s a touch more complicated. She’s not glad that he’s dead, not by any stretch of the imagination, but she can’t make herself feel anything more than a simple <i>oh<i>, as if the mere concept of Ianto and death existing in the same time and space is somehow beyond the capabilities of the universe. It’s a strange feeling. She’s known people die before, of course she has, but it’s never felt quite so detached as this. There’s a sense of loss, but it’s muted, almost. It’s there, but there’s not enough to make anything of it beyond a simple acknowledgment of the fact that she is now living in a world that is void of Ianto Jones. It’s not like his death has any real impact on her life, even if he’d lived to be ninety it’s unlikely their paths would ever have crossed again, but the knowledge that he’s dead still feels wrong somehow, like it wasn’t supposed to happen, he simply got caught up in another cosmic feud between Gods. </i></i></p><p>
  <i>
    <i>The sun is almost starting to rise again by the time Mandy Albiston has convinced herself that she has successfully pushed all thoughts of Ianto Jones out of her head.<br/>
But when she dreams, it’s still of him.</i>
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